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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26769139">Not Another Oneshot Collection!</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishoutofcamelot/pseuds/fishoutofcamelot'>fishoutofcamelot</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Merlin (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Episode: s01e01 Dragon's Call, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Episode: s05e13 The Diamond of the Day, arthur in avalon, assume ive been replaced with a robot clone, everyone has a bad time, if i ever write these characters having a GOOD time</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 03:36:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,884</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26769139</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishoutofcamelot/pseuds/fishoutofcamelot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>For every episode of BBCM, there will be a oneshot related to it. Welcome to Hell, folks.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gwaine &amp; Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Merlin &amp; Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>42</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Not Another Oneshot Collection!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I'm doing a BBCM rewatch on my Tumblr (@fishoutofcamelot), and for each episode I intend to write a oneshot inspired by what I watched. Go check that out under the tag #Fish Rewatch Time, if you feel like it!</p><p>Today's episode: 1.01 The Dragon's Call.<br/>Today's oneshot: post-canon angst, somehow</p><p>I'm a one-trick pony, yall, and that one trick is pain. </p><p>Also! This is my first oneshot collection. Mostly this is just my way to ease back into the game after not writing for so long. Enjoy! &lt;3</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"How's your knee-walking coming along?" Arthur asks, giddy. The words are practiced, but the fact he's said them a million times doesn't detract from how his heart swells at the feel of them against his tongue.</p><p>The skinny boy in front of him is young, oh so young, far too young. He halts in his footsteps, then tries to continue walking on. Arthur knows how this ends, knows the boy - knows Merlin - won't walk away, but he can't help the hitch in his chest that maybe this time will be different.</p><p>"Ah, don't run away!" Arthur cries eagerly.</p><p>After a long pause, Merlin finally quips, "From you?"</p><p>His voice is so young that if Arthur hadn't already heard it before, his heart would shatter, and those shattered pieces would melt into wax.</p><p>"Thank God," Arthur says, gasping dramatically. "I thought you were deaf as well as dumb."</p><p>"Look, I told you were an ass. I just didn't realize you were a royal one."</p><p>And when Merlin turns around, it's just like every other time he turns around. It's like walking under a cold waterfall, where all your senses spring to life, like you've never been awake until this very moment.</p><p>Impish, elfin features far too sharp and delicate to be fully human. Eyes dancing with blue mirth and - now that he knows what to look for - tiny, mischievous flecks of gold. Skinny frame, no scarf, tattered jacket yet to be replaced with one more befitting of a royal servant.</p><p>Merlin's face twists into a smirk at the sight of Arthur. Arthur, who's wearing skin too young to be his own. "Oh, what are you going to? Get your daddy's men to protect you?"</p><p>But just as Arthur opens his mouth to say the next line - "I could take you apart with one blow" - a flash of black and brown appears in the corner of his vision.</p><p>A condescending laugh. "This is your idea of a fond memory, princess?"</p><p>Arthur closes his eyes and groans. "Gwaine. What a pleasant surprise."</p><p>When he opens his eyes again, the world is frozen in place. Merlin isn't moving, nor are the sycophants behind him - even the gentle breeze has ceased its blowing. The only remaining signs of animation and life are Arthur and the scruffy, roguish man leaning against one of the nearby produce stalls.</p><p>True to form, he takes a bite out of one of the apples being sold by a frozen-in-time fruit seller.</p><p>"What do you want, Gwaine? Don't you have your own dalliances to relive instead of bothering me?"</p><p>Gwaine smirks, but it's not as snarky or lively as it used to be. Fitting, considering both that he died and that he died gruesomely. If Arthur looks hard enough, he can see remnants of Gwaine's torturous final breaths linger as ghosts in his brown eyes.</p><p>There's a reason Arthur doesn't look too closely, after all. And it's not just because he finds Gwaine's presence annoying (although that is certainly also true).</p><p>"Ah, can't I just stop by to visit my king?" Gwaine teases. A flash of pain crosses his gaze as it lands on Merlin, frozen in time like everything else, but Arthur doesn't look too closely at that either.</p><p>"I'd prefer if you didn't, to be honest," Arthur grumbles in return, but there's very little actual heat to it. There's a certain camaraderie that comes from being dead.</p><p>Gwaine bats him on the arm. "Now that's just unfair." Another bite into the apple, this one deliberately loud enough to annoy him. "Riddle me this, Your Highness - the stewards of Avalon let all departed souls choose what memories they get to relive and when. Out of everything you could have chosen, you picked this one. Why?"</p><p>Arthur sighs, rolls his eyes, shrugs himself out of Gwaine's reach and steps closer to Merlin. Young Merlin, innocent Merlin, chip-on-his-shoulder Merlin.</p><p>Gwaine takes his silence as an invitation to keep talking, but he's no longer looking at Arthur at least. Probably because Arthur's standing too close to Merlin, and everyone in the Round Table knows that Gwaine can't look at Memory-Merlins for too long without getting teary-eyed (to be honest, none of them can). "Do you really enjoy the thought of bullying Merlin that much?"</p><p>Arthur shakes his head and, voice hoarse, corrects him. "Not bullying him. <em>Meeting</em> him."</p><p>Intrigued, Gwaine chances a risky glance at Merlin. His throat convulses, and his lip trembles, and he looks away again. Takes a bite out of his apple again, but with less vigor than before. The look in his eyes grows ever more haunted.</p><p>This time, it's Arthur's turn to misinterpret Gwaine's silence as an invitation to keep talking. "Despite what you may think, being a prince is actually pretty lonely."</p><p>"Not to mention your dad was a bit of an ass."</p><p>Uther's off in his own corner of Avalon, living out the same handful of ballroom dances with Ygraine over and over until the end of his afterlife. Not in any position to bother listening in, but Arthur still can't help the itchy feeling he gets whenever he speaks ill of his father. He checks the rest of the memory-space for signs of Uther, just to be sure. </p><p>"That too," Arthur quietly admits. He places a hand on Memory-Merlin's motionless shoulder, but finds himself unable to look past his own boots. "This fight, it changed that. Here was a commoner who knew exactly what I was, but didn't care. And although I utterly hated him at first..." A wet, wobbly sigh. "...deep down, I think I subconsciously knew that I wasn't alone anymore."</p><p>Gwaine says nothing. He's not sure there's anything to say.</p><p>Countless decades ago, he lost track after 50, Arthur died. He died in Merlin's shaky arms, and he woke up in Avalon. Bereft of any familiar touch, torn away from the comfort and safety of the living realm. A woman who called herself Freya greeted him, and told him about Avalon. About how until destiny brought him back, he could spend his afterlife reliving any memory of his choice.</p><p>Lancelot has a montage of moments with his family, Gwen, and Merlin that he cycles through - and, when he's feeling especially dramatic, the moment he sacrificed himself to seal the veil.</p><p>Elyan has just three memories: him as a child, chasing Leon with a large beetle to shove it down Leon's shirt, while a young Gwen toddles excitedly after them, accidentally killing the worm she's got squished between her hands; sitting next to his mother under a large oak tree, her teaching him how to sew and him groaning about how it's too girly; and lastly, Gwen's coronation. Arthur always likes to drop by Elyan's place whenever he's dreaming up that last one.</p><p>Gwen doesn't like to restrict herself to just a few memories. Almost every time he visits her corner of Avalon, she's reliving a different one. But the memory of her and Merlin sneaking up on Arthur while he checks out his reflection in a plate seems to recur rather often (much to his  consternation).</p><p>Leon and Percival both follow the Lancelot model of recycling the same five memories or so. No one knows what goes on in Gwaine's afterlife, though, because he always switches the memory to some explicit sex thing the moment he realizes he has company.</p><p>And Arthur? Arthur sticks to one memory and relives it over and over again. The memory of his and Merlin's second encounter. The moment he realized, however subconsciously, that he wasn't going to die alone like he had always feared.</p><p>(And he didn't. For all the many ups and downs of his life, Arthur could at least say that much.)</p><p>Gaius is much the same too, for the record. His one memory is of him and Merlin sitting at the dinner table, talking about complex magical concepts and laughing over some inane castle gossip. The domesticity of it makes Arthur's eyes sting. He doesn't visit Gaius's afterlife very often.</p><p>"I get it," Gwaine says, after a long draft of silence. "Merlin...tends to have that effect on people."</p><p>Arthur snorts. "Don't let him hear you say that, he'll never let us live it down."</p><p>Gwaine snorts too, but neither of them have the energy or emotional wherewithall to commit to a full laugh.</p><p>When Gwaine speaks again, his voice is solemn and low. "I spoke to Gaius recently."</p><p>"Yeah?"</p><p>"He says..." Gwaine clears his throat. "He says Merlin is immortal. That he won't be joining us in Avalon. That he..." Gwaine trails off.</p><p>Though it pains every fiber in his body, Arthur finishes his sentence for him. "He'll be stuck on Earth, unable to die, until destiny brings us all back to life. He's - he's all alone." At Gwaine's surprised expression, he adds, "I know. Gaius told me."</p><p>In another time, Arthur might have expected Gwaine to get upset about him not saying anything. He might have asked Arthur why he never told anyone, why he kept that bit of important information to himself. He might have tugged at Arthur's collar, eyes manic with sorrow.</p><p>But they've all been dead for a long time, far too long. And Gwaine is tired. Arthur is too.</p><p>Truth be told, he just wants to be alive again. Even if it's just for a moment. Just long enough to grab Merlin by the shoulders and pull him into an embrace, to whisper apologies into his ear and drag his old friend with him into Avalon.</p><p>But life just loves to trample on Arthur's dreams, so why should it stop now?</p><p>"I see," is all Gwaine says. When he sets his half-eaten apple back on the produce cart, it magically restores to its prior virgin form.</p><p>"We'll see him again. We will, Gwaine. And when we do, we'll cure his loneliness just as he did for us." Arthur's not sure if he believes that, hasn't in about forty years, but he tries. He says it in a strong and confident voice because he has to. Because his fragmented hope is the only thing keeping him sane after all this time.</p><p>Gwaine sighs. It's a sad, broken thing, and it says nothing and everything all at once. He pins Arthur's blue eyes down with a watery brown gaze, heavy with a meaning Arthur can't hope to deduce.</p><p>"Until then, we wait." Gwaine pushes himself upright and away from the stall he'd been slouching against, and brushes off his grey tunic. His glance in Merlin's direction only lasts for a split second, but it's all the time Arthur needs to see just how many horrors lurk in the back of his mind.</p><p>Arthur nods. "Until then, we wait."</p><p>Within the blink of an eye, Gwaine is gone, and time in Arthur's afterlife resumes.</p><p>His words crack and warble and overflow with the force of his unshed tears. "I could take you apart with one blow," he whispers.</p><p>The memory of Merlin, trapped in an eternal limbo of youthful naivete, simply smirks and says, "I could take you apart with less than that."</p><p>Arthur falls to the ground, collapses onto knees that are far too young for his ancient soul, and weeps. The memory continues on without him, deaf to his cries of pain.</p>
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